Comic Book Reader Recommendations?

[katharos]

Just hoping I can borrow your brains! My sister loves reading comics and I was thinking about getting her a device of some kind which would let her store and read e-comics on the go. Problem is, I'm not really sure what's out there!

She's very happy with her laptop and not that interested in a tablet, so I don't want to get something mega expensive like an Ipad and pay for all the extra bells and whistles.


From my research I think I'm looking for something:

With colour

A large screen size - Most comics are formatted at approaching A4 size and constantly having to zoom and scroll to read the dialogue would become annoying quickly and might stop you wanting to use it.

A fair sized memory - comics eat up space quickly. I think the ideal set up would be a device with an expandable SD card slot so she could load up her different collections and then swap them in and out as she wished. But that would be an ideal luxury add on.

Powerful enough that the pages load quickly and keep the reading experience smooth.

A comic reader app and a way to get the files on to it easily.


Does anyone use a device for reading comics that they'd recommend? Or know of something that might be good for this purpose that I could research more?

Thank you!

Comments

[samvara]

I can only speak to the iPad v1 but I find it -just- big enough to read comics on and would not want to go any smaller. You'd only have to get the cheapest model but yeah, they are more expensive than e-readers.

[valiha]

I use Pocketbook IQ, which is a 7" Android tablet. It is not state-of-the-art, and it runs an older version of Android, but with a dedicated app I can read comics comfortably in landscape mode set to width, and I only scroll once up to see the lower part of the page. I find it works well enough, and it has the advantage of color. It has 1GB of internal memory, a cable to connect it directly to PC, and an SD card slot (I think it can take up to 4GB cards).

If she mostly reads B&W comics, maybe getting one of the larger e-readers? I'm not in the market for one, so I'm not familiar with the prices, unfortunately. The IQ model sells for $180 on their web page: http://www.pocketbook-int.com/us/products/pocketbook-iq

They have several world wide resellers so you can go to their international page ad choose a location that suits you: http://www.pocketbook-int.com/welcome-pocketbook

I hope that's been helpful!

[zvi]

If she can wait until November, she may want to go with the Kindle Fire. It's a 7" tablet, and you can get both the graphic.ly app (which has an associated store) and the comicat app, which will read cbr and cbz files she side loads. Also, some DC graphic novels will be available exclusively via Kindle for a while.

The fire is $200.

HOWEVER, (and this is a big but) nobody's really gotten to do any hands on use of the fire, especially for comics, so she may want to wait until she can touch one (I believe they will retail through Best Buy and Radioshack in the US) before deciding whether or not it fits her needs.

[sanacrow]

I've tried reading them on a Nook Color. The display is great, but the screen is just small enough to be annoying for anything more than occasional reading.

The iPad (1 or 2) screen (thank you disability tech grant) is perfect, and there are several apps that side-load comics very well.